What to look for in a website booking system
A website booking system lets somebody book you from your own site at any hour, without ringing and without waiting for you to reply. The one you want takes the slot, takes a deposit or the full payment where you need it, blocks that time everywhere at once, and sends the confirmations without you touching anything. The part most people forget to check is where it lives, because that decides who owns the bookings and the customer details afterwards.
What actually changes for you
The obvious change is that bookings arrive while you are working, asleep or with a customer. The bigger one is that the back and forth disappears.
Most enquiries for an appointment take three or four messages to settle: are you free Thursday, what time, how much, yes please. A booking system does all four in one go, and it does them at eleven at night when the person is actually thinking about it.
The other thing that changes is the diary. When the slot is blocked the moment it is taken, you stop double booking yourself and you stop checking three places to find out whether you are free.
What your customer should see
Real availability, not a form that says somebody will be in touch. If they have to wait for a reply to find out whether you are free, it is an enquiry form with extra steps.
Then a price, or a clear reason there is not one yet. Then a confirmation in their inbox straight away, and a reminder before the appointment so they turn up.
All of that should happen on your website, in your branding, without sending them off to a page that belongs to somebody else. A booking that never leaves your site is a booking where nobody has to trust a second name halfway through.
The things worth checking before you commit
Whether it takes payment, and what it costs you to take it. A deposit turns a no show from a lost slot into a paid one, so a system that cannot take one is doing half a job.
Whether it talks to the calendar you already use, so you are not keeping two diaries. Whether you can change your hours, your prices and your services yourself without asking anybody.
And what happens to your customer list. The names, numbers and booking history are what the system is really holding, and they should be yours to export on any day you feel like it.
If you would rather this was just handled, we build booking into your own website, with payments, reminders and your customer list all in your name.
Adding booking to a WordPress site
Plenty of people arrive at this question already on WordPress and looking for a plugin. The things to check are the same three: can it take a deposit, is the customer list yours to export, and can you change your own hours and prices.
The way we build it is into the site itself rather than as an addition on top. The booking screens are part of your website, so they look like it and load as fast as it, the payment side is built and tested as part of the build, and there is one thing to keep updated instead of two.
Booking on Wix and other builders
If you are on a builder that includes booking, the questions to ask are the ones above: can it take a deposit, does it hold your customer list in a form you can take with you, and can you change it yourself.
The thing to check carefully is the money. Ask whether anything is taken as a percentage of each booking as well as the monthly fee, because that is the figure that grows as you get busier.
What we build has no cut of your bookings and no per booking fee. You pay to have it built and then the bookings are simply yours.
What a real one looks like
Countryside Canines is a dog daycare in Swaffham Prior. The site takes the booking, takes the payment through Stripe, and handles the slots without anybody ringing to ask whether there is space on Thursday.
It is built into the website rather than sitting beside it, so the owner has one place to look and the customer never leaves the site they arrived on. That site now has 132 phrases on page one of Google and sits in the top five on Maps for dog daycare, measured in Search Console and the Google Business Profile.
What it costs and what stays yours
A booking system built into your own site starts from £1,200, quoted as a fixed price against a written scope before anything begins.
There is no monthly platform fee to keep it switched on and no cut of what you take. The domain, the hosting, the code and the customer list are in your name from the first day, which means the thing you are buying is an asset rather than a subscription.
Before you ask
Can a website booking system take deposits?
Yes. A deposit means a no show costs the customer rather than you, and we build deposits and full payment in through Stripe, so the money is in your account before the appointment rather than after it.
Will it sync with my calendar?
It should, and ours does. Keeping two diaries is how double bookings happen, so the booking system and the calendar you already use need to be the same picture.
Do I pay a fee on every booking?
Not with a system built into your own site. You pay for the build once, and after that the bookings are yours with no cut taken and no monthly fee to keep it running.
How long does it take to build?
Most go live within two weeks of us having your services, your hours and your prices. Your quote carries the actual date.
Can I change my hours and prices myself?
Yes, and we show you how before it goes live. Anything bigger, message Ben and it usually just gets done.